Switch fabrics are typically employed for “raw” data switching from input ports to output ports of various kinds of devices, including processors, memory, circuit boards, servers, storage servers, external network connections or any other data processing, storing, or transmitting device. However, switch fabrics can often be a data processing bottleneck for many different kinds of computing environments. A typical switch fabric, for example, can limit the scope of a computing environment's ability to handle the ever increasing data processing and transmission needs of many applications, because many switch fabrics are fabricated to accommodate only the “port-rate of the day” and the “port-count of the day” and are not fabricated to accommodate larger bandwidths that may be needed to effectively accommodate future applications. In particular, the amount and frequency with which data is exchanged between certain devices can be larger for some devices than for others, and the use of low-latency, metal-signal lines employed by most switch fabrics also have limited bandwidths. As a result, the amount of data that can be transmitted between devices may not be well matched to the data transfer needs of the devices employed by an application at each point in time, which often results in data processing delays. In addition, the use of signal lines necessitates considerable power consumption in order to transmit electrical signals between devices.
A number of the issues associated with electrical signals transmitted via signal lines can be significantly reduced by encoding the same information in electromagnetic, radiation (“EMR”) that is transmitted via waveguides. First, the data transmission rate can be increased significantly due to the much larger bandwidth provided by waveguides. Second, power consumption per transmitted bit is lower for EMR transmitted via waveguides than for transmitting the same data in electrical signals via signal lines. Third, degradation or loss per unit length is much less for EMR transmitted via waveguides than for electrical signals transmitted via signal lines. Physicists and engineers have recognized a need for fast switching devices that can accommodate data encoded EMR as a medium for transmitting massive amounts of data between various kinds of data processing, storing, or transmitting devices.